Thunderstone Search Appliance Manual

Choosing to either edit a configuration or create a new one takes you
to a listing page where you can change the facets of a configuration.

General Information

The General Information section contains things that don't pertain directly to
the remote database itself.

Configuration Name

If you're creating a new configuration, you will be asked to enter a
name. It is used when specifying which group of settings you want to use
when DBWalker is invoked, but has no bearing beyond that.
Names may contain letters, numbers, dashes, and underscores (no
spaces).

Stylesheet

Specifies which XSL stylesheet to use. You can only
use stylesheets that you've already uploaded. Please see the
Managing DBWalker Stylesheets (pg. here)
for more information.

Max Rows per Page

Sets a maximum number of rows to use on a single index page. If there
are more rows than is allowed on a single page, next and
back links are used as necessary to see the rest of the
links.

This is because if a table contains 10 million rows, just generating
the index page can take huge amounts of time. DBWalker can be
told to only deal with 100 rows at a time, keeping it from getting
bogged down.

Appliance Link

If you are using an internal interface to access the Search Appliance's
administrator interface, this can allow you to force the
DBWalker to be walked through an interface that will be visible
to external users. Usually the default for this will be fine.

If administrators are accessing the Search Appliance through an
internal-only interface, let's say internalonly.example.com,
then the DBWalker will get walked as
http://internalonly.example.com/texis.... This will work fine
for the walk itself, but when external users use search, they will see
results referencing internalonly.example.com, which they won't
be able to access.

By setting Appliance Link to something like
www.example.com/texis (or whatever external users will be able
to see), then the DBWalker will get walked with the proper
links.

Database Information

The database information section collects information about how to
connect to your remote database.

Type

This determines which JDBC driver will be loaded. DBWalker
comes with support for Oracle (11g and 12c), Microsoft SQL Server,
Sybase, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Texis.

The Oracle (dedicated) type is used to connect to an Oracle
database through dedicated mode instead of the default
shared mode. There is a slight performance disadvantage to
this, and should only be used when the ordinary Oracle type
does not work.

Alternatively, you can select [jdbcConnect] as the type, which
lets you manually enter the JDBC Connection String. The Host,
Port, and DB/Service values are all contained in the
JDBC connection string, so the Connect String field replaces
all 3 of them.

Host / Connect String
The contents of this field depend on what Type you have
selected.

Database Type

field contents

Oracle, Sybase, PostgreSQL, MySQL, or MS SQL Server

the hostname of the machine you're connecting to, or its IP address.

Texis

the hostname and full path to theJDBC script on the remote server, i.e. host.example.com/texis/jdbc.

[jdbcConnect]

the full JDBC connection string.

If the type is [jdbcConnect], then this field is
Connect String, which lets you specify the full JDBC connection
string. This is useful if you already know the JDBC connection string for your
remote DB and don't want to have to break it down into hostname, port,
etc. The exact formatting of this string differs for each remote
database type.

Port
The port number that the remote database is listening to.

Oracle, Sybase, PostgreSQL, MySQL, or MS SQL Server

the port to use, or leave blank for the default.

Texis

unused, already specified as part of the Host field.

[jdbcConnect]

unused, already specified as part of the Connect String field.

DB/Service
The contents of this field is dependent on your database type.

Sybase, MS SQL Server, PostgreSQL, or MySQL

the name of the database you want to connect to.

Oracle

the name of the service to connect to.

Texis

the full path to the remote database, i.e. C:\morph3\texis\testdb\ or /var/db/testdb.

[jdbcConnect]

unused, already specified as part of the Connect String field.

Username

The username to give to the remote database. If this is left blank,
username/password will be asked from the user when a request is made.
Please see the "DBWalker Authentication Overview" section
(pg. here) for more information.

If connecting to a Microsoft SQL Server database, it's possible to enter
DOMAIN\user as the username to use domain authentication, where
DOMAIN is the domain that the server belongs to.

Password

The password to give to the remote database. If this is left blank,
username/password will be asked from the user when a request is made.
Please see the "DBWalker Authentication Overview" section
(pg. here) for more information.

Table Information

The table information section collects information about the table that you
want to access.

Table

the name of the SQL table you want to retrieve data from.

Fields

An optional list of fields to retrieve from the table. By
default, all fields are retrieved. This is specified as a
comma-separated list, as you would use in the beginning of a SQL query.

Where clause

Allows you to limit the data returned by DBWalker.
It is not limited to using the fields specified in the fields
section. The where clause should not contain the SQL keyword WHERE,
just the conditional clause. For example, if your table has
an id and a name, you could set Fields to name and
Where clause to id>100 to only get names of records
where the id is greater than 100.

Key Field

Specifies the "key" field of the database. This field
should be able to uniquely identify each record in the table,
allowing DBWalker to create a list of links to each record from a
single index page. If no key field is specified, the entire
contents of the table will be displayed.